Archaeological Fieldwork in Southern Iraq

Catalog description

After several decades of closure to foreign researchers, the heartland of the world's earliest cities (southern Iraq) has reopened for archaeological expeditions. This course is a seminar for graduate students who will conduct fieldwork in Spring 2019 at two major Mesopotamian cities, Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar) and Lagash (Tell al-Hiba), as part of Penn-led teams. Leading up to fieldwork, we will conduct a critical review of past investigations at these and other contemporary Mesopotamian sites of the fifth-second millennium BC. We will discuss how recent work in northern Mesopotamia (Syria, SE Turkey, Kurdistan), Anatolia, and South Caucasia provides new archaeological approaches to be applied, new questions to be answered, and new models to be tested in southern Iraq. In the field, students will work alongside the instructor and other archaeological project staff to learn and hone excavation and survey techniques. During and following fieldwork, each student will conduct an independent project on material excavated and surveyed in the field at Ur and/or Lagash. This project should align with the student's interests and will further the research program of the archaeological teams at Ur and Lagash.